Queen of Hearts is a species in its own right!!

[ragoonaths]

The Queen of hearts is a species in its own right according the article it's new name is Nepenthes Robcantleyt you could read the whole article here http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencet...-award-winning-debut-Chelsea-Flower-Show.html

 

[Cthulhu138]

I'd be really cool if the article is legitimate. It's one my personal favorite plants and is one of the highlights of my collection. I think "robcantleyt " is probably a typo, it would probably be "robcantleyi". Keep us posted on any further info you find.

 

[ErrorEN]

Very nice! I know this is a silly question, but exactly what distinguishes it as a separate species?

 

[ragoonaths]

yes i think that Nepenthes Robcantleyi is the correct spelling not Nepenthes Robcantleyt

 

[Nepenthesis]

Very nice! I know this is a silly question, but exactly what distinguishes it as a separate species?

I'd like to know the answer to this as well. Pretty exciting that it's a new species.

 

[Cthulhu138]

Very nice! I know this is a silly question, but exactly what distinguishes it as a separate species?

mato77429 posted this quote from Rob Cantley last week. It may shed some light on the designation of it as it's own species due to it's extremely close proximity to the Pasian Highland locale yet sharply varying characteristics and flowering season.



"All our 3 mature plants - including the QoH and our two males KoH and KoS - are parent specimens we raised from seed of the original wild collection from the black N. truncata. We took no plants or cuttings from the wild. This is why it took us 10 years to start breeding these plants. Out of the approximately 3,000 seedlings we raised, from the only grex of seeds we have produced to date, we kept back 300 plants in our nurseries which are now typically 30cm across and also have exactly 550 separate clones in the lab. So far we are seeing only very slight differences in morphology, consistent with typical slight variability within a stable species and no evidence at all of hybrid origin. If anyone has a plant that is aberrant I would be interested to know. Colouration varies somewhat with the plants we have but all are dark to a greater or lesser extent on both pitcher body and peristome. Some are nearly entirely black (KoS is a good example of really black).

Some confusion may have arisen because N. truncata – Pasian comes from the exact same location as the black N. truncata. However, they flower at very different times of the year. We had to make several trips to the site to get seeds of both".

 

[mato]

I really wish they'd gone into more detail as to why Dr. Cheek considers it a new species. Nonetheless, the news is exciting.

 

[lance]

I'd like to know the answer to this as well. Pretty exciting that it's a new species.

Im not sure to why but it is a VERY exotic genetic flaw in the truncata species, so that is probably why they decided to name it a species. Too bad it wont be commercially available until next 20 years or so.

 

[JB_OrchidGuy]

Well it would have been nice for the article to call the plant N truncata 'Queen of hearts' that was then changed to ghd new name. What was new about it that saparates it from truncata?? There is no more royal truncata if this is true. It is now a hybrid. I would like to see more. Also read more from other nrpenthes "experts" on the mater

 

[ragoonaths]

Im not sure to why but it is a VERY exotic genetic flaw in the truncata species, so that is probably why they decided to name it a species. Too bad it wont be commercially available until next 20 years or so.

you could imagine that if it did become commercially available the excitement would probably dwarf that of when the Nepenthes truncata QOH x KOS were first released

 

[Mr Acurite]

they didn't show any pictures of the actual QoH plant, use the word Nepenthes once, or even say a ything about it being a truncata. Did a botanist write this or did someone just want to troll the people who are going to get there plants to eat them?

 

[Whimgrinder]

N. robcantleyi

The Queen of hearts is a species in its own right according the article it's new name is Nepenthes Robcantleyt you could read the whole article here http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencet...-award-winning-debut-Chelsea-Flower-Show.html

Something to bear in mind is that although the article cites only the 'Queen of Hearts' clone, that is not the only plant representing this "new species"; the other so-called "royal" clones are from the same population of plants raised from seed by Cantley. That means that if one of the clones is going to be assigned a new species designation, then all of the royal clones will (pardon my choice of phrasing) follow suit. Furthermore, that means the 'Queen of Hearts' X 'King of Spades' seedlings will all be redesignated as seedlings of N. robcantleyi, not N. truncata.

Many species undergo a renaming process over time as we learn new things about them and our tools for assessing species traits become more sophisticated; it's a fluid process. Nothing to get upset about, really. What does it matter if all of these "royal" seedlings sent into commerce suddenly turn into N. robcantleyi instead of N. truncata? Does that devalue the plants in any way? Not to my thinking it doesn't. If anything, the people who have bought these seedlings can now claim to be among the first to have this spectacular new species in their collections. For some, this will elevate the value of the plants. In fact, I won't be surprised if the cost of these goes up now!

Now, before we get ahead of ourselves, let's keep in mind that this is just a newspaper article, and we shouldn't assume that just because one botanist thinks this deserves distinct species status that the community will accept that decision and apply it going forward. I think multiple "authorities" will have to weigh in on this before we should accept it as a "done deal". Then there is always the remote possibility that this is just a marketing ploy to push sales of the remaining seedlings available. I wonder how many of the 3000 seedlings BE raised are still unsold?

 

[amphirion]

this is very interesting...makes you wonder if those major nep propagators already know something that we dont know...

"Some confusion may have arisen because N. truncata – Pasian comes from the exact same location as the black N. truncata. However, they flower at very different times of the year. We had to make several trips to the site to get seeds of both"

implications here are big ones. if you guys havent caught it, the implications are that 1) nepenthes are capable of flowering consistently every year, and 2) flowering schedule is also species specific.

holy crap. now to find what those specific triggers are.

 

[Exo]

Not a surprise to me, I had long ago heard that nepenthes typically flower every year, and each species can flower at different times of year.....what I don't know is what triggers are required.

 

[Dexenthes]

Im not sure to why but it is a VERY exotic genetic flaw in the truncata species, so that is probably why they decided to name it a species. Too bad it wont be commercially available until next 20 years or so.

you could imagine that if it did become commercially available the excitement would probably dwarf that of when the Nepenthes truncata QOH x KOS were first released

I'm not really entirely sure why it deserves new species status but if that is true, both the King and Queen are members of that extinct population, so all royal truncata would be members of this new species.

It's pretty strange, I was doing some research yesterday about this cross and a lot of reading, and then I wake up to see this thread!

Odd...

I too, would be quite interested to hear what taxonomy justifies this plant being a new species.

Either way, I'm glad I got my greasy paws on one.

*waits patiently for borneo to chime in and let their excited customers know*

 

[Cindy]

The picture showing the N. truncata is not even of the The 'Queen of Hearts'. The QoH is a single plant and the pitchers are not green like that. I wonder how authentic the article is.

 

[swords]

dailymail.co.uk is a common enough news site if you read RSS aggregates so it's a "real site".

The average joe-reporter doesn't know a Nepenthes truncata from a Utricularia fulva nor do they know/care how to spell it, Queen of Hearts is easy to remember and spell. I don't know what makes it any more than a subspecies or distinct form of N. truncata however...

 

[nightsky]

they didn't show any pictures of the actual QoH plant, use the word Nepenthes once, or even say a ything about it being a truncata. Did a botanist write this or did someone just want to troll the people who are going to get there plants to eat them?

Hah I noticed that also. They screwed up a lot of stuff. Same thing happens with aviation stories in the press. They consistently outright lie about things but present them as facts.

Anyway, cool news if it does indeed end up being true.

 

[JB_OrchidGuy]

So the king of spades is of the same group the queen of hearts is? Interesting. I still would love to still know more.

And btw. This process may be fluid, and plants get shuffled all the time, but it leads to confusion. Especially in the orchid world when they move whole groups of plants and many different hybrids have been made.

 

[SirKristoff]

Copied from Mr. Cantley himself, over on pitcherplants.proboards

"Good grief! What an awful newspaper article! I gave a long telephone interview to an intelligent journalist from the Independent a couple of days back, so I do hope that some better and more accurate articles will be forthcoming - PLEASE!

Firstly and fore-mostly, Paul, this really is not some sort of marketing ploy. We sold pretty much all the seedlings ages ago and tried to keep the price reasonable so that it could be spread far and wide. We kept back 300 plants but actually they are already sold, we’re just holding them until the project that bought them is ready to take them. It’s been interesting though, as they are mature enough now to see that there is very little difference in morphology between individuals, so we’re not dealing with a hybrid here. Martins paper goes into this in some depth.

I, and every taxonomist who has seen the plants, have known this is a distinct species for many years but until it was published, we couldn’t talk about it, as we knew it was being described elsewhere and it became a race to publish. Martin's paper will be appearing in the December issue of the Nordic Journal of Botany (NJB) any day now but an abstract is already available

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1756-1051.2011.01449.x/abstract

Martin Cheek actually wrote the paper 1 ½ years ago and it’s taken that long to get it published. If you see the entire paper – which will be downloadable free I believe from the NJB website - he refers in the paper to our most recent Chelsea appearance being in 2010. So slowly do the cogs of academia turn!

The paper goes into detail of course as to why this is a new species. Not just the fact that it has wings on the pitchers when N. truncata does not, or that the peristome ribs are so widely spaced but the flower is different and the glandular structure under the lid is utterly different, being pretty much identical to N. veitchii and nothing like N. truncata.

As to the name, I didn’t have an inkling what name Martin would choose until after the paper was written. Can’t say I mind really.
So, it’s time to change your labels I’m afraid!

Merry Christmas everyone and happy New Year!

Rob"

Read more: http://pitcherplants.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=general&action=display&thread=10684#ixzz1hidwXpV6






So it looks like it is a seperate species after all, cant say im too surprised as i have even noticed differences comparing my QoH x KoS with my pasian plant....
pretty exciting actually

i guess in accordance to Mr. Cheeks description, the plants are referred to as Nepenthes robcantleyi sp. nov.

time to write new labels...